


This Body We Share

by mythras_fire



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Baseball is America's National Pastime, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Couch Cuddles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Philosophy of the mind, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-01-26 21:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12566520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythras_fire/pseuds/mythras_fire
Summary: There’s a stowaway hiding out in Bucky's body and he's been doing research practically non-stop since we came to Wakanda, trying to figure out a way to stop the train and turn the stowaway in to the proper authorities. To rid his body of this pestilence that has been infecting him for longer than I was in the ice.This body we share.





	This Body We Share

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast series on Spotify this summer and came across these two podcasts about the philosophy of the mind: [What Mind Control Feels Like](http://open.spotify.com/episode/7ayE07xbC63DK3PgSIUVrD?si=SuSUmk2q) and [Where Is My Mind?](https://open.spotify.com/episode/00cs8WOuPVjAXDJxIv5ss3) Obviously, my thoughts went immediately to Bucky, which made listening to the podcasts a richer experience for me because I kept posing the questions that were raised during the podcast to Bucky's life and pondered how he might answer them. If you've ever been curious about this topic, whether because of Bucky, and Clint, too, or just in general, I highly recommend these podcasts- the hosts are erudite, amusing, and do a lot of scholarly research for each episode, which makes for a very enlightening listen ^^.
> 
> Disclaimer: All outside sources referenced below belong to their respective creators; I own nothing.

I padded into the living room in the middle of the night to see him crying.

Again.

This time, though, the tracks of his tears looked like tiny little rivulets that were dissipating in a summer haze, which meant that he’d been sitting in this position for a protracted length of time - a statue of Rodin's Thinker perched over the coffee table - staring numbly at a holographic computer screen T’Challa had shown us how to use when we moved into our own suite at the Royal Palace in Wakanda.

Our own suite.

Ours.

Mine and Bucky’s.

…and the Winter Soldier’s…

_Damn you, Hydra._

Anyone who says that real men don’t cry doesn’t know shit about what makes a man real.

James Buchanan Barnes is as real as they come. It takes a real man to survive unimaginable torture designed to mentally tear a visceral hole in the very essence of what makes you who you are- your mind, your soul, YOU- and sadistically inject a slave’s mind into the confines of your head. A slave that answers to no one but the person uttering those god-forsaken words.

_Damn you all to Hell._

The Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes, but Bucky Barnes is not, never has been, and never will be the Winter Soldier. Those Hydra goons tried to take away my best friend. Tried to toss Bucky out of his own body and hijack it with something cold and lifeless. The Asset. When they found out that the brainwashing was incomplete, they went ahead with the Winter Soldier project anyway and just left Bucky in there to languish as a prisoner inside his own head. There’s a stowaway hiding out in his body and Bucky’s been doing research practically non-stop since we came to Wakanda, trying to figure out a way to stop the train and turn the stowaway in to the proper authorities. To rid his body of this pestilence that has been infecting him for longer than I was in the ice.

This body we share.

Bile rises in my throat every time I think about the horrors Bucky had to endure while I was sleeping. Over. And over. _Ad infinitum_. Nausea crashes over me in waves every time I hear about the horrors the Asset committed using Bucky’s body. Carrying out orders. Like a machine.

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

_You’re my mission._

The bile and the nausea are nothing, however, compared to the burning sensation in my veins when I see Bucky crying.

I was conspicuously loud with my bare footsteps on the zebra-wood floors as I approached the soft-grey, L-shaped, fabric-covered couch in the darkened living room. I wanted to give Bucky’s subconscious ample warning that someone was entering his personal space while he was engrossed- maybe enthralled is a better word- by whatever he was reading on the screen. For his eyes were indeed tracking across the semi-transparent hologram, his face awash in the dim, ghostly blue light, so at least he wasn’t imitating The Thinker down to the last detail.

His eyes finally broke away from the screen to regard me as I slowly slid down onto the low-slung couch cushions to his right. The look in his eyes made the burning in my veins spike enough to cause a small gasp to make an escape attempt from my throat but I willfully kept my mouth shut. Bucky was in enough pain already. He didn’t need me adding my personal anguish to his mountainous pile.

His eyebrows furrowed in concern anyway. Busted. Always was an open book with him before when he was the one taking care of me, not sure why I thought I might get away with it now when our roles were presumably reversed.

_Buck, do you remember me?_

_I'm fine._

I slid my arm around his shoulders, needing to be close to him. Since he’d found me again after several lifetimes, even if he didn’t know he had at the time, I found myself always needing to be closer to him these past few months. Close enough to touch, never close enough. My left hand settled against his waist, the pathway unencumbered now in the absence of the mechanical arm that used to occupy that space. I turned to look at the screen. He leaned into me and rested his head on my shoulder, his right hand falling from the keyboard projection on the coffee table to rest on my pajama-clad thigh. An anxious sigh snuck out into the otherwise silent room. His body deflated a bit into mine. I gripped him a little more tightly. His hand on my leg responded in kind.

Bucky had been reading an article- wait, was it a story?- entitled [Where Am I?](http://www.newbanner.com/SecHumSCM/WhereAmI.html) by someone named Daniel C. Dennett. On the screen itself, there were notes written in Bucky’s neat and tidy block lettering- a lost art, that style of printing, one that I hadn't seen since the War. I'd recognize it anywhere. He had also highlighted different passages, earmarking them for further research.

At a glance, I noticed that, in addition to having apparently just finished reading this- yes, it was a story, no, an essay- one that had been published in a book called Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, annotated in a footnote at the bottom of the screen; there were several other tabs opened to various websites all with scientific titles dealing with matters of the brain, the mind, philosophy, and a Wikipedia page on the history of psychology.

Hey, would you look at that, there are even two tabs open that I actually recognize from my art studies, a page on Necker cubes and another on Escher drawings. Huh, those seem a little incongruous.

There was a separate window opened to something called Spotify that seemed to be paused in the middle of playing something from a, does that say ‘podcast playlist’? I squinted at the screen to read the scrolling title: Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

I’m not exactly a Luddite, but Bucky has had way more time to get used to this new-fangled technology than I have, so I kind of just mentally shrugged my shoulders and turned back to the part of the hologram I knew how to use. I scrolled back up to the top of the page of what Bucky had been reading when I got out of bed to go look for him. He didn’t leave our bed every time he couldn’t sleep, which was often, so when he did, I would go out to check on him after a little while. Sometimes he wanted company. Other nights he needed some space.

Tonight he welcomed me by re-positioning himself so he could lay his head in my lap, inviting me to read the essay with a wave of his remaining hand from where it was now snugly wrapped round the underside of my knee. My left hand immediately and absentmindedly began to stroke Bucky’s soft brown hair away from his face and down along his scalp to his neck, pouring every ounce of calm, hope, and love I had into the simple gesture. A slightly more restful sigh slipped out into the darkness surrounding us.

I pulled on the corner of the hologram with my other hand and it tilted its eerie blue glow upwards as I settled back against the couch and began to read.

~*~

_...At any given time a person has a point of view and the location of the point of view (which is determined internally by the content of the point of view) is also the location of the person…_

WHAT ABOUT WHEN A PERSON HAS NO POINT OF VIEW?? WHERE ARE THEY THEN?

_...Couldn't one get lost? Of course, but getting lost geographically is not the only way one might get lost…_

TEMPORALLY. PHILOSOPHICALLY. EMOTIONALLY. MENTALLY.

_...Point of view clearly had something to do with personal location, but it was itself an unclear notion. It was obvious that the content of one's point of view was not the same as or determined by the content of one's beliefs or thoughts…_

NO IT FUCKING IS NOT.

_...For example, what should we say about the point of view of the Cinerama viewer who shrieks and twists in his seat as the roller-coaster footage overcomes his psychic distancing?..._

PSYCHIC DISTANCING??

_...Has he forgotten that he is safely seated in the theater?..._

HOW CAN YOU ANTICIPATE THE NEXT CURVE IN THE TRACK WHEN YOU CAN'T BLOODY SEE IT???

_...Here I was inclined to say that the person is experiencing an illusory shift in point of view. In other cases, my inclination to call such shifts illusory was less strong. The workers in laboratories and plants who handle dangerous materials by operating feedback-controlled mechanical arms and hands undergo a shift in point of view that is crisper and more pronounced than anything Cinerama can provoke. They can feel the heft and slipperiness of the containers they manipulate with their metal fingers..._

YEAH, WELL, IT'S A WHOLE DIFFERENT BALLGAME WHEN YOU'RE ONLY IN CONTROL OF IT SOME OF THE TIME.

_They know perfectly well where they are and are not fooled into false beliefs by the experience, yet it is as if they were inside the isolation chamber they are peering into. With mental effort, they can manage to shift their point of view back and forth, rather like making a transparent Necker cube or an Escher drawing change orientation before one's eyes. It does seem extravagant to suppose that in performing this bit of mental gymnastics, they are transporting themselves back and forth…_

IT WAS THOSE DAMNED WORDS. I HATED THOSE WORDS. ALMOST AS MUCH AS I HATED ZOLA.

~*~

Zola.

The conniving, evil bastard. At the sight of that name, I was hit by a freight train of memories that stretched into the past more than seventy years...

Hearing that Bucky and the 107th had been captured at Azzano in Umbria.

Seeing him lying prone on that filthy little gurney in that godforsaken hellhole.

The warm tingling sensation all the way down in my toes, hearing him shout across the chasm inside that imploding building, “NO, NOT WITHOUT YOU!”

The look of pride on his rugged, roughed-up, beautiful face, walking back into camp with the soon-to-be Howling Commandos behind us, victorious for a day.

The best day of my life, celebrating our reunion in my tent. Over. And over. _Ad libitum_.

The worst day of my life, watching him sink into the abyss. Over. And over. _Ad nauseam_.

Me and Natasha in that bunker, confronting Zola’s rotten, stinkin’, polluted mind inside that mainframe before we had to take cover.

Ka-Boom.

Bucky stirred at the sudden sibilant sound of hissing that reverberated through the midnight silence and turned his head in my lap to look up at me with concern, startling me out of my disturbing reverie.

“Steve? What is it?”

It was only then that I realized that the hissing sound was emanating from my own throat- I had been about to say Zola’s name out loud but couldn’t get past the first syllable. My jaw ached from clenching my teeth. I choked a bit on the sudden blockage of air as I firmly closed my lips and shook my head once to each side as if doing so could throw off the ugly memories. If only.

I looked down into Bucky’s worried blue eyes and just breathed him in for a moment. “It’s nothing, Buck. I was just- got caught up in some-, it’s fine.”

Bucky twisted his body so he was lying on his back with his head still in my lap, glancing briefly at the screen as he did so. I resumed brushing the long strands of dark brown hair out of his eyes, a self-comforting gesture for sure.

“Did you read the whole thing?”

I had to clear my throat twice before I could speak. “No, um, not yet. I uh, kind of got distracted by that one part about the- where you’d written some notes on how it felt. When they activated- when things went dark,” I finished lamely. My thoughts were all over the place and I was having a hard time focusing on the here and now.

Bucky looked down at his hand resting on his stomach and then picked up my left one, twining our fingers together as he acknowledged the part of the essay to which I was referring with a slight nod of his head.

“Yeah, I wrote a few notes in some other places, too, but this section seemed to call out to me the most, and I thought that maybe I could find something in there that could, y’know-”

“Bucky, you don’t have to-”

“-help. No, Steve, it’s okay. With you, it’s always gonna be okay, pal.”

I smiled down at him, but it was a sad affair and probably better that Bucky’s gaze was still fixed on our joined hands.

He heaved a big sigh and then quietly began to speak.

“Once their conditioning was complete, I could maintain control of my own point of view until one of those goons would start reading off that fucking string of cursed words until my whole perspective slid out of my grasp and I was left in the dark. At some point later on- sometimes hours, sometimes days- my perspective would slide back into place just as suddenly as the optical illusion does when you blink your eyes.”

Here, Bucky released my hand to snap his fingers as an auditory representation of how quickly, how harshly, he would come back to himself after a mission. I selfishly took up his hand in mine again as soon as it dropped back to his chest, needing the comfort it brought me. He had switched back to his primal role as caretaker and his thumb began to rub soothing circles over my skin. Something else he could do in a snap.

“But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was the onslaught of flashbacks of what I- what the Asset had done. They came with no warning and no rhyme or reason. After a few years I began to actually look forward to cryo because being insensate inside a freezer brought me a peace I wasn’t allowed out in the world of the living. And at least, in there, I couldn’t hurt anyone.”

“ **You** never hurt anyone, Buck,” I reminded him vehemently.

Bucky looked up at me then, eyes shining with the wistfulness of someone who wants to believe with all their heart that what you’re saying is true but knows deep down that they’ll never truly be able to forgive themselves for what happened, no matter what the truth may turn out to be. So they play along for your sake, and you just have to wait.

“I know, sweetheart,” he said, blinking sleepily. “I just want this to be over, Stevie.” He turned again, this time snuggling himself in between me and the couch, so I shifted to the outer edge of the cushions to be the big spoon, as we were so often arranged in bed. I relished being the big spoon. He’d been taking care of me for so long, it was my turn now.

“It will be, Buck, just you wait. It’ll all be over before you know it. And we’ll finally get to go to a Dodgers game instead of having to listen to it on the wireless.” I picked the happiest, most mundane thing I could think of from our childhood wishlist of things we wanted to do when we grew up as I wrapped my right arm around his waist and snuggled up to him so I wouldn’t fall off the couch.

Bucky still had enough energy left to snicker from the depths of the couch at my choice of outings. “I hate to break it to you, pal, but they ain’t the Brooklyn Dodgers no more.”

“What?!” I asked in confusion and dismay, my head resting just above his, breathing in the rugged, earthy scent that was Bucky.

“Yeah, sad business, that. Westward expansion in the '50’s and all that because airplane travel became easier and they didn't have to take the train all over hell and gone anymore.”

“Where are they now?”

A pregnant pause. Bucky always did know how to string me along till I was taut as a bowstring.

I poked him in the back of his legs with one of my knees before whining, “C'mon, tell me ya big jerk!”

His teasing having bared fruit, he chuckled at me before declaring with fake solemnity, “Los Angeles.”

“California? Really?!”

“Haha, yep. Wanna know where the Giants wound up?”

I groaned. Bucky full-on laughed. Music to my ears.

“Ugh, ok fine, tell me.”

“San Francisco.”

“What the fuck? Why does California have all our teams?”

Bucky was shaking in my arms now from his vain attempt at keeping himself from laughing harder.

I squeezed Bucky a little more tightly and took a dramatically loud deep breath of air before asking, “Please tell me the Yankees at least are still playing in the House that Ruth Built.”

Bucky managed to get his giggles under control. Only just. “Yeah, baby doll, they’re still there. New York hasn’t lost all of its cool just yet. We’ve actually come up against them a bunch of times in the World Series even after the move to the West Coast. So yes, we are going to go to a Dodgers game, and yes, we are going to get seats in the nosebleeds so we can sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame at the top of our lungs, eat hot dogs and throw popcorn at each other, and make out like the couple of horny kids from Brooklyn we still are.”

I kissed the top of his head to seal the deal. “Damn straight we are. I don’t care how far away we have to go to give my best guy a night out on the town. And they damn well better beat those Yanks, too.”

Bucky found one of my hands and brought it up to his lips and signed his side of the bargain.

A big yawn escaped from my own lips at that moment and we made our final adjustments on the couch before settling in for the night.

Just before nodding off, a thought occurred to me that made me huff with indignation, my breath disturbing the hair on top of Bucky’s head.

He grunted his question, already half-asleep, his breathing pattern starting to level out.

“I wouldn’t put it past Howard to have moved the Dodgers out to the West Coast just so that he wouldn’t have to get on a plane to go catch a game whenever he was summering out there…”

The sound of Bucky’s sweet laughter washed over me and I got the best sleep I’d had in ages.

~*~

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> For all you baseball fans out there who know that the Yankees have been playing in their new stadium since 2008 or thereabouts, Bucky didn't want to add insult to injury after telling Steve the unfortunate news about their favorite baseball teams, so he's keeping that little tidbit on the DL for now, y'know, ;)


End file.
